The story
Mostaganem Chaabi and Melhoun Festival in Mostaganem
A national melhoun poetry festival in Mostaganem, institutionalized in 2003 and dedicated to sixteenth-century founding figure Sidi Lakhdar Benkhlouf, combining poetic recitations and formal academic panels with lively concerts of traditional Bedouin and chaabi music, staged annually at the city's own historic regional theatre venue.
Institutionalized in 2003, Mostaganem's national melhoun poetry festival honors Sidi Lakhdar Benkhlouf, the sixteenth-century figure widely credited as the founder of melhoun poetry in the Maghreb, a genre of vernacular Arabic verse that forms the textual backbone of much of Algeria's chaabi music tradition.